Relocation of Migrants in need of International Protection (Opt-in Decision)

Debate between Mike Weir and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Monday 14th December 2015 Commons Chamber

[Mr Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am actually going to support the Government today, too. There seem to be amazing levels of support, which is always quite dangerous, but it is refreshing that the Scottish National party is here in force to ensure that these matters are properly debated and scrutiny is carried out effectively.

The reason I support the Government is partly that the European Union has made an absolute hash of it. I phrase myself slightly more bluntly than the hon. and learned Member for Holborn and St Pancras (Keir Starmer) who, in glorious understatement, said that the scheme of the European Union was not working as anticipated. Well, I thought that was on a par with the late Emperor of Japan, who at the end of the war said:

“The war situation has developed not necessarily to Japan’s advantage.”

When we think that, according to the Daily Express, 184 people out of 160,000 have been relocated, it is a failure even by the terms of the European Union. It introduced a plan that was hotly opposed by elected Governments. It imposed it by qualified majority voting. We, fortunately, had an opt-out, which we used. But what underlies this policy is, to my mind, also so wrong.

Here I disagree with the hon. Member for Glenrothes (Peter Grant), who made a very powerful speech about the duty we have to mankind in general. I very much accept that. The duty to refugees is fundamental. It is tremendously important and is something the United Kingdom has done for centuries. The question then is how to do it well, how to do it effectively, and how to preserve life so that we actually save people. It seems to me that what the European Union has done has made the situation worse for the refugees themselves. Of over 900,000 who have come by boat to the shores of the European Union in 2015, 3,671 have either died or gone missing. The terrible events in the Mediterranean in 2014 led the Holy Father to say:

“We cannot allow the Mediterranean to become a vast graveyard.”

The reason this happened is the pious but failed hopes of the European Union’s refugee policy: the idea that as soon as people get into the boundaries of the European Union they will get citizenship, but if they cannot get here there is nothing that will be done for them. That seems to me to encourage people to take these crazy risks that have led to the tragedies. The EU’s policy is itself creating dangers for refugees.

The refugees who come are not the halt and the lame, but the fittest and the most able to take the risks involved in trying to cross the sea to come to the European Union. We have seen that 70% of the refugees who have come to the European Union are in fact men, primarily young men. A system has been set up that creates incentives and leads people to take foolish risks to come here in the first place. The people who are most at risk—the children, the elderly and the frail—are left behind, because if they apply from their risky country, the forces of the EU will not let them in.

Her Majesty’s Government have got this right, but the numbers are hopeless. The 20,000 over five years is absolutely a step in the right direction, but of course we should do more. We should think of how many we take from the European Union under the free movement of people. In the year to March 2015, we took 183,000 economic migrants from the European Union; 183,000 people who were safe in their own country and not at risk of persecution. They were not in fear of their lives. They wanted to come here for the most noble and honourable reason—to improve the condition of themselves and their families. They moved halfway across a continent to do it and that is something I admire hugely. That is a very Conservative thing to do—to wish to better oneself and to take that risk. That is what entrepreneurs do. However, they are economic migrants, not refugees. And because we take so many people from the European Union under the guise of the free movement of people, when it comes to taking those who are genuinely at risk of their life we take 4,000 a year. We take 4,000 a year from the camps in Syria who may die if they do not escape, and we take 183,000 because we believe in the principle of European citizenship and that anyone who wants to come here from the EU should be free to waltz in, wherever they have waltzed from.

This is not only undesirable in domestic political terms: it is undesirable in moral terms. We are not helping those who are most in need; we are helping those who do not in fact need our help and support. We are helping those who are safe, rather than being generous to those who are at risk. This seems to me a fundamental failing of the European Union, because—instead of giving aid to refugees—it encourages people to take unwarranted risks, and gives benefits to those who are already safe.

Why do I stick to this number of 183,000 and what is the context? The context is that there is a limit to the numbers any country will take in any one year, not because free movement is a bad thing in itself but because the societies to which people move cannot cope with the influx above a certain level. There is not the infrastructure, there are not the schools or hospitals, and the society lacks the capacity to absorb large numbers at one point. Their arrival needs to be staggered over a much longer period. If we have so many coming from safe countries, inevitably we have to be mean with the numbers we can control because they do not benefit from the European treaties and free movement with the EU.

The EU’s whole approach is wrong, and we, in our renegotiation, are unutterably feeble; all we are doing is muddling about with a few benefits, which is not why people come anyway. As I said earlier, they come for that noble, inspirational reason: they want to improve their lives and those of their families. They do not come because they are benefits cheats, yet we grub around on that, rather than thinking about the real problem—the scale of immigration from the EU. As the hon. Member for Luton North (Kelvin Hopkins) pointed out, free-for-all immigration does not work for our democracy. Our people—our voters, our electors—do not want it, they reject it, and yet the Government do not even ask to get this back under domestic control. Instead, they do not opt in to one part of things with many parts, but it will not have any great effect.

I will support the Government tonight, but what was the best reason we heard for why the 800,000 Mrs Merkel is welcoming in will not come here? Apparently, our ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary to Germany has reported to Ministers that we do not need to worry about them coming here because the Germans are slow at processing citizenship applications. Well, isn’t that lucky? They are slow. I always thought German bureaucracy was efficient, but clearly not; when it comes to processing citizenship applications, they might take 10 years. So we will not get 800,000 today or tomorrow. But we will get them the election after next. That, I am afraid, is where the Government are failing and letting down the British people. They have opted out of one thing, but they have left the big, the real, the major problem at the centre—

[Mike Weir (Angus) (SNP)]

rose—

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

Of course I will give way.

[Mike Weir]

I am finding it difficult to follow the hon. Gentleman’s argument. Why, once these 800,000 people have been settled in Germany for 10 years, are they all suddenly going to come to the UK, with their new German citizenship papers?

[Mr Rees-Mogg]

The amount of immigration to this country from the EU shows that we are a great magnet. Everyone seems to want to come to the UK, including to the glories of Scotland. It is extraordinary the draw we are. In a way, I am proud of this. I love the fact that people all around the world think the best place to live is the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. It should give us a glow of pride about the success of our nation under this glorious Conservative Government, who are bringing us peace and prosperity.

Scotland Bill

Debate between Mike Weir and Jacob Rees-Mogg

Tuesday 15th March 2011 Commons Chamber

[Jacob Rees-Mogg (North East Somerset) (Con)]

I am sorry not to be able to support the new clause moved by the hon. Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar (Mr MacNeil), who is in many ways a walking advertisement for the Union. It would be a great loss to this Parliament if he were not here and were prevented from coming here by a division between our two great countries. I am deeply concerned about his new clause. It is partly creeping republicanism, partly an attack on property and partly a subsidy to Scotland from the poor, hard-done-by English taxpayer, who has had enough of this and wants a little bit of money to creep back south of the border from time to time.

Let me start with that sad day in March 1603, when our beloved sovereign of blessed memory, Elizabeth, died. When she died, James VI was hailed as James I of England, and we saw a mystical union of the Crowns: a mystical union that has remained true through not only world wars but civil wars, and has brought our people together. We have come together as peoples in the Crown, and as a result of a further development in the Act of Union 1707, we have come together as a Crown in Parliament. Anything that attacks the Crown, that undermines the Crown, is something about which we, representing one part of the Crown in Parliament—one part of the great system of government that we have—should always be careful.

[Mr Weir]

The hon. Gentleman’s history lesson is very interesting, but I am not sure why he sees the new clause as an attack on the Crown. The Crown Estate’s money does not go to the Crown; it goes to the Treasury. It was signed over to the Treasury many years ago in exchange for the civil list. The new clause attacks not the Crown but the way in which the money is used, and is intended to secure a better deal for our coastal communities.

[Jacob Rees-Mogg]

I thank the hon. Gentleman for an extremely helpful intervention. It missed a key point. Indeed, the hon. Gentleman may wish his hon. Friend the Member for Na h-Eileanan an Iar to withdraw his new clause.

The Crown Estate’s income was not given away in perpetuity in exchange for the civil list; it is given reign by reign. That started in the time of George III, who was a bit hard up at the time. He needed the money. Parliament had, and of course still has, tax-raising powers. In exchange for the Crown Estate’s income, George III accepted the civil list. That continued during the reigns of George IV, William IV, Queen Victoria, Edward VII and George V, the brief reign of Edward VIII and the reign of George VI, and it continues during the reign of our present most glorious sovereign. However, it is not a permanent settlement.

Any step that undermines or changes the Crown Estate should be taken with the greatest caution. I hope that the day never comes, but if we were to have another sovereign, that sovereign would be entitled to claim the Crown Estate for himself. If we had introduced measures that took it away, we would have broken the bargain that was made in the reign of George III and has been renewed in subsequent reigns. We should be extremely wary of interfering with a system that has worked so well.

I also want to deal with the attack on property rights, which are the fundamental basis of a free society and the rule of law. I know that some hon. Members like me to dwell on history occasionally. We know that rights of property have been established in this country since 1189—